


A Grief Observed

by afinecollector (orphan_account)



Series: Not Waving but Drowning [15]
Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: A Grief Observed, C S Lewis, Death, Emotions, Epilepsy, Family, Funeral, Gen, Grief, Grieving, Holmes Family, Hurt/Comfort, Mycroft loves his brother, Myoclonic Epilepsy, Seizure, Sherlock can't do emotions, Sherlock's sadness is immense, Siger is amazing, h/c, myoclonic jerks
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-16
Updated: 2016-07-16
Packaged: 2018-07-24 11:12:25
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,577
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7506081
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/afinecollector
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The funeral of their grandmother brings Sherlock's inability to cope with sadness to the forefront of Mycroft's deductions.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Grief Observed

**Author's Note:**

> Title and Quotes taken from the C.S. Lewis work 'A Grief Observed'.

The church was hushed to human voices while the gentle music of the piano played an emotional tune that sounded like the very tears of the angels. Tinkling and melodic, it was desperately sad; fitting given the occasion was one that did not warrant an ounce of happiness. Mycroft stood before the congregation, the eldest of the Holmes grandchildren and the first boy, able to speak clearly but his hands shook with grief and nervousness. He held a small, typed document in his hands and he read from it with misty eyes but unfaltering tone. 

“I run out of words for expressing the exact nature of the emotions that have come over us as a family in the last week. To express myself freely and without faltering would be an injustice to my grandmother, and misrepresent just how difficult it has been to try to find the words. We know that, in the midst of life we are in death, but the realisation does not hit a person until they are faced with the overwhelming sensation of a void that appears in the instance of death. I can only begin to speculate that if we, her grandchildren, are mourning her loss this deeply that her children Amanda, Abigail and Siger must be feeling a pain that cannot be penned.” 

Sherlock stared at his brother from the pew, seated between his mother and father, his chest aching with every breath he took. His vision was blurred, his eyes hot with tears, but he remained focused on Mycroft and let his words sink deep into his mind. 

“...and it is because I run out of words that I turn to the words of a man I have grown to respect through my studies, and through the love my younger brother has always had for his work. Forgive me as I borrow from C. S. Lewis is conveying what it is I feel I should say.” 

Sherlock licked his lips and stiffened his back, a movement his mother felt against her. She pushed her hand into his lap and took his hands in hers. Sherlock looked to his side, eying his father, and felt a sting in his heart to see heavy tears flowing down his cheeks. 

“No one ever told me that grief felt so like fear. I am not afraid, but the sensation is like being afraid. The same fluttering in the stomach, the same relentlessness, the yawning. I keep on swallowing.” 

Sherlock dipped his head and stared down at his hands, his eyes drawn first his mother’s hand twisted around his left, and the way her thumb rubbing circles where it hugged around his own thumb. He could hear the sound of his father sniffing, and reached for a tissue from the packet on his mother’s lap to hand it over to him. Siger gave his son a watery smile and squeezed his hand on Sherlock’s knee in quiet thanks. 

“At other times it feels like being mildly drunk, or concussed. There is a sort of invisible blanket between the world and me. I find it hard to take in what anyone says. Or perhaps, hard to want to take it in. It is so uninteresting. Yet I want the others to be about me. I dread the moments when the house is empty. If only they would talk to one another and not to me… An odd byproduct of my loss is that I’m afraid of being an embarrassment to everyone I meet. At work, at the club, in the street, I see people, as they approach me, trying to make up their minds whether they’ll ‘say something about it’ or not. I hate it if they do, and if they don’t…” 

Sherlock felt his throat tightening and wished there was something he could do to stop the agony. He recalled the words Victor had told him when he had started his first term at University, that grief cannot be explained until you feel it and, even then, it cannot be explained because there are no words to express the emptiness, anger and sadness that envelop your insides and twist, and crush, and churn. There are no words for loss and, he thought, Mycroft was right; if he felt so broken and unable to speak about the loss of his grandmother, how must his father and Aunts be feeling faced with the death of their mother?

“And grief still feels like fear. Perhaps more strictly, like suspense. Or like waiting; just hanging about waiting for something to happen. It gives life a permanently provisional feeling. It doesn’t seem worth starting anything. I can’t settle down. I yawn, I fidget, I smoke too much. Up till this I always had too little time. Now there is nothing but time. Almost pure time, empty successiveness…”

Sherlock chewed the inside of his mouth as Mycroft looked up again and set down the paper he’d read from. He wanted to let the tears fall but he didn’t, he wouldn’t. His eyes were hot and uncomfortable and he felt a churning sickness in his gut. The sounds of his mother and father crying, the view before him where Abigail sat with her daughters, their partners and the room around him filled with people who evidently shared in his grief was suffocating, filling his senses with an overwhelming mix of visions and sounds that made the selfishness of grief hard to work through. 

“Saying goodbye is not an easy feat. It has been long recognised as a Holmes maxim that a goodbye is never used, we simply leave and hope for a second visit. Millicent Holmes has stuck to that to her very end. It is here that I reiterate that I came to a loss as to what to say, but I know that her son - my father - has prepared a fitting tribute to the woman we all loved and respected and so I will step down to allow him to endear you even further to the woman that was the matriarch of this family.” 

Mycroft and Siger slowly changed places without a word. As their father took to the front of the church, Mycroft ensure he was as tightly against his brother’s side as he could get. Sherlock looked at him, his lips tight in a locked purse, and shrugged his shoulders. “I know.” Mycroft nodded, whispering his words, and blinked slowly. 

“More solid a woman than my mother you could never meet.” Siger began. “If nothing else, my mother instilled into me the importance of raising your children to respect their lineage and to work hard at their goals to prove to the world that they can meet them. Millicent was, to many, an eccentric fool who spoiled her grandchildren with ideas above their station but it is this singular talent of my mothers that made my children and my nieces and nephews exactly what they are today. That made myself and my sisters who we are. She, along with my father, taught us how to be parents, how to be upstanding citizens, and how to ensure that we provided a life for our children such as the one that had been provided for us. I am proud to have been the son of Millicent and William Holmes, I am proud to have been through my life with a view of life and love, and humour, that could only have come from Millicent and her manner of living. My children have memories to serve them their entire days thanks to the woman who brought me and my siblings into this world. I could thank my mother for so much, but I mostly thank her for having existed at all. Without her, I would not have the wonderful life I share with my wife and sons today.” 

Sherlock’s tongue dug into his right cheek and he exhaled through his nose, feeling that burning ache of breathlessness in his chest. He twisted his right wrist as the sensation of marching ants began to plague it, and nudged out his elbow into Mycroft’s side. “I need to go outside.” He whispered.

“It’s okay, just...you’ve got Mummy and me either side of you, just…” Mycroft murmured, “Do it.” 

“It’s too much in here.” Sherlock whispered back. “I feel...scared.” 

Mycroft, in one of his rarest of moves, twisted his hand into Sherlock’s and held it tight. “It’s alright.” Sherlock stared at their entwined limbs, then at his brother, as the tingling in his arm turned into a twitch, jerking Mycroft’s arm into his ribcage when his own hand lurched in against his body. 

Mycroft watched his arm moving on Sherlock’s accord and wondered if this was the closest he would ever get to understanding what it felt like for Sherlock to be gripped by the myoclonic jerks he experienced in the mornings and when under stress. He wondered if this would be the learning curve he’d hope to experience to allow him to better get into his brother’s mind. He watched Sherlock’s face for a moment, then looked back down as the contraction on Sherlock’s arm released and he dragged his hand out of Mycroft’s. 

“I need to go outside.” Sherlock repeated, hushed. “It’s not this,” He said, “I don’t want to cry in here.” Mycroft regarded him with a tilt of his head. Of all the things Sherlock could be scared of, it seemed it was emotions that frightened him most.


End file.
